


family forever

by fluffywonder



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 18:31:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20314069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffywonder/pseuds/fluffywonder
Summary: In which Natasha learns the meaning of family, and learns the importance of permanence.





	family forever

_“Nothing lasts forever.”_

She’d told Fury that, and she’d even believed it.

His response was true to this day.

_“Trouble, Ms. Romanoff. No matter who wins or loses, trouble still comes around.”_

Thanos was coming around now, and they were all throwing themselves into preparations. But all that ran through her mind was why she had tried so damn hard to keep the Avengers together after Leipzig when, according to her own self,  _nothing lasts forever._

So what made her think this team, her chance at redemption, would last?

_(‘Sloppy’, Madame B would say. ‘Weak, forming genuine attachments.’)_

_“I was trying to keep the Avengers from breaking apart,”_ is what she’d told Tony. She’d considered him collateral to that goal, when the goal was futile in the first place. God, she owed him Tony one hell of an apology, not even for abandoning him, but for abandoning him for an unworthy cause.

She’d just been trying to keep her family together, but...

_Tony was part of your family too. And nothing lasts forever, _her traitorous brain whispers.

And now, Tony had a new family with Pepper and Morgan - a new family she was about to disrupt by asking him to come back to the thing he’d walked away from five long years ago.

But, she thinks, as she closes her eyes to block out the horror of her actions. But Clint had a family too, and they’d all been dusted and Tony lost a son as well, so he  had  to help, right?

But did she really have the right to ask this of Tony, after betraying him so thoroughly and lying to him for most of the time that she knew him? 

_(‘Nothing is more important than the mission.’)_

She hates it, but she’s spent the past five years trying to get to right here - a place where they can undo the snap, undo the chaos, undo the terror. If it was Clint living happily with his family in the middle of the woods, she likes to think she’d pull him back in as well.

_(‘Just like Cap did,’_ her mind murmurs.)

Except she wouldn’t lie to Clint, because she considered him a friend, and since she considers Tony a friend despite everything, she resolves she won’t lie to him either. He deserves at least that much respect.

She’s honest with him as they eat lunch out on his patio, the patio he painstakingly built while Pepper had barely been pregnant. She’s honest with him when she tells him she wishes there was another way. She’s honest when she holds Morgan close and pushes away the memory of holding another little girl in her arms. 

At the end of the day, it’s Tony’s choice. She can’t force him into anything he’s not ready for.

_She could manipulate him, but she won’t._

_(‘These people are more important than the mission,’_ she thinks, trying with all her heart to believe it._)_

——

One snap, and she’s suddenly shuffling her way between two families. She’d lost Clint on Vormir, and instead of blaming her, Laura is as sweetly warm as ever, helping her celebrate Clint as he was - a father, a friend, a neighbor, a lover, an Avenger.

Clint had brought her in from the cold, had seen something  _forever-like_ in her, and she owes it to him to pay her debt one last time.

And there’s Pepper. Pepper carries more anger, but she understands that Tony made his choice, and at the funeral, Pepper crushes her in a hug and whispers.

_“You knew him, Natasha, in ways even I didn’t. Tell her about him.”_

And Natasha cannot say no, cannot bear to fail another little girl like her own family failed her. She wanted Tony and Clint’s legacies to last forever in these little girls’ minds.

She looks at Morgan and Lila, both little girls left fatherless, and the knowledge that she’s loved and trusted by these innocent beings overwhelms her. But if she has anything to say about it, they’ll grow up with love, and they’ll never be without family.

Holding two little girls in her arms, Natasha thinks she might have found her family too.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave reviews please! 💜


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